Alaska - population for the entire state is less than 630,000, roughly 1/10th that of NYC; 66% that of Detroit - about the size of Fort Worth…What, tell me what, if any, major challenges has Alaska had? Anyone can manage when times are good, but it takes an intelligent and wise leader to manage when times are bad. Sara Palin is an idiot. What did Alaska have to choose from when they elected her? It must have been slim pickin’s… Below are the questions Katha Pollit wrote that Sara Pollitt should be asked.
”Suppose your 14-year-old daughter Willow is brutally raped in her bedroom § by an intruder. She becomes pregnant and wants an abortion. Could you tell the parents of America why you think your child and their children should be forced by law to have their rapists’ babies?
You say you don’t believe global warming is man-made. Could you tell us § what scientists you’ve spoken with or read who have led you to that conclusion? What do you think the 2,500 scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are getting wrong?
If you didn’t try to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Baker over her § refusal to consider censoring books, why did you try to fire her?
What is the European Union, and how does it function? §
Forty-seven million Americans lack health insurance. John Goodman, who has § advised McCain on healthcare, has proposed redefining them as covered because, he says, anyone can get care at an ER. Do you agree with him?
What is the function of the Federal Reserve? §
Cindy and John McCain say you have experience in foreign affairs because § Alaska is next to Russia. When did you last speak with Prime Minister Putin, and what did you talk about?
Approximately how old is the earth? Five thousand years? 10,000? 5 billion? §
You are a big fan of President Bush, so why didn’t you mention him even § once in your convention speech?
McCain says cutting earmarks and waste will make up for revenues lost by § making the tax cuts permanent. Experts say that won’t wash. Balancing the Bush tax cuts plus new ones proposed by McCain would most likely mean cutting Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Which would you cut?
You’re suing the federal government to have polar bears removed from the § endangered species list, even as Alaska’s northern coastal ice is melting and falling into the sea. Can you explain the science behind your decision?
You’ve suggested that God approves of the Iraq War and the Alaska pipeline. § How do you know? “ 

(Katha Pollitt – The Nation, Sept 22, 2008, Ten Questions Sara Palen Should Be Asked)

Read The Nation and everything you can get your hands on by Howard Zinn. Also, - research BRIC and see what Brazil, Russia, India and China have been meeting about for the past 5 years - then pay real close attention when idiot Palen’s statements imply a non-existant diplomatic, borderline hostile, attitude toward Russia and Iran….  Remember, she said it herself - she’s a pitbull with lipstick on. What would you do if a pitbull attacked you?  that’s right - you’d shoot it!...What do you think the rest of the world would do? A vote for McCain & Palin is a sure vote for the draft and WWIII and assures a depression greater than history ever imagined…
Wake up!  Women are smarter than this!!

Palin is not a symptom of the progress of women, with her much-approved anti-women stance. She is instead a symptom of the steadily increasing power of the Christian right. It has been happening in this country too. A good book, ‘The Purple Economy’, covers the situation in Oz. It’s a small press publication and may be hard to find over there, but it’s probably worth it. The parallels would be useful.
I always find many parallels here useful to my native politics (thankyou!).

It’s all about image in TVland. Hillary Clinton is so hideous that she made a reasonably attractive 44 year-old woman look like Botticelli’s Venus by comparison.

“During this primary, Democratic women were often divided by generation. Many edgy conversations and strained family dinners took place between older women supporting Hillary and younger women supporting Obama. Mothers thought daughters had abandoned the women’s movement. Daughters told mothers they’d been liberated to vote for the person, not the gender.

Now, with enough suddenness to cause whiplash, many of these mothers have taken up the cry of their daughters: “I want a woman in the White House, but not this woman.””

LOL! This has brought women on the left together more than the media is reporting.

I was a Hillary supporter back in 2004. I was mad at her in 2008. Still, I will support her in a defamation suit against the RNC for this Palin character assassination. To use this brainless lummox to marginalize America’s demand that women and non-occidental ethnicities be afforded the same opportunity to run the country afforded 43 European American men ought to be an actionable crime.

Rove screwed the pooch on this one. He was so counting on Obama folding to the pressure to put Hillary on the ticket to ensure the support of that alleged 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, until he didn’t include anyone but Palin on Gramps’ short list. When Obama ganked Turdblossom with the Biden tap, Rove decided that he would still have a beauty pageant that ran his unvetted cutie pie for President through the bought-n-bossed corporate media. It was a last ditch effort to lure in all the disgruntled faux feminists while simultaneously yanking in that politically indifferent constituency of criminally lascivious middle aged males who traditionally vote with their dicks, who claimed Hillary shriveled up their little boners. Palin was not selected because she was a political unknown worth promoting through the party ranks. That was Jimmy Carter in the 70s. Palin was Miss Congeniality. After that, she became the Godzilla that savaged Wasilla. She’s now a religio-fascist gun nut, whose only accomplishment has been bearing children. Still, though, she’s physically more attractive than Hillary, and could be trained to read whatever Rove put on the teleprompter.

The problem now, though, is Palin has already peaked and plateaued. We haven’t even reached the VEEP Debates yet, and the spectacle of her pop-stardom fiercely wanes every time she speaks unscripted. And, all sans one shred of anything from Hillary which Team Gramps can fiendishly manipulate to grant BlunderWoman an ounce of Presidential credibility, much to Rove’s resentful chagrin! What’s more, that Palin is a code-worded, gameless, empty church dress has become obvious to everyone with any-what of a measuarable IQ. Palin is going die a hundred deaths during the first question posed by the moderator when she faces off against Joe Biden. Face it, Dick Vader this chick is not. She’s actually a sad characture of Chimperor Dumya the Feckless with a cheap synthetic up-do weave.

The difference between Palin and Obama, who are not really running against each other, but people try to paint that false picture, is this:  People who live in Alaska like Patricia-Faye Brazel, Diane Woodruff and Gary Lungren feel betrayed.  They say Palin ran up a tab in Wasilla and left.  And they say Wasilla is still suffering because of it.  Palin has run something.  She does have experience running a city and then a state.  But she did not do a good job.  The Republicans are always saying that Barack Obama hasn’t run anything.  He hasn’t, but he also doesn’t have a record of FAILING at running something.  Palin, by the stories being told by many Alaskans, does have that record.

My fear is that since she failed on a small scale which is Alaska, she will fail on a LARGE scale if she were to win the White House in November. This frightens me to no end. McCain is sick and old. Let’s face it. It makes me think that a vengeful McCain, who doesn’t have anything to lose anyway, choose Palin because he was angry because America and the World were fawning all over Obama and he got jealous.  Sometimes his tone sounds like a jealous teenage school quarterback who lost a game to a less popular quarterback.  It appears to me that this is all a game to McCain.  He doesn’t need the money, the fame, nor does he care about helping middle-class America. He wants to win just for spite.